


Last Words

by MisplacedLonelyHeartsAd



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s10e15 The Things They Carried, Gen, Missing Scene, episode coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 12:13:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3609669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisplacedLonelyHeartsAd/pseuds/MisplacedLonelyHeartsAd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For s10e15 The Things They Carried: missing scene with Dean and Cole, and coda with Dean and Sam, from Dean’s POV.</p><p>
  <em>Thanks a lot, Cole, Dean thought irritably. Now on top of everything else I’ve gotta worry about my last fucking words.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Words

 

Cole sat crouched in front of the fireplace, his lips moving silently as Dean kept his eye on him for any sign of danger. Suspecting that the man was praying, Dean had to resist the polite impulse to turn away. For a moment, in the flickering light, Cole looked very young—too young to be a battle-weary veteran with a family, and more like the boy who had once stared uncomprehendingly at him over the body of his dead father.

 _Just a little younger than Sam,_ Dean thought absently—the same thought that had crossed his mind at the time. _Still calls his father “Daddy,”_ had been his next thought, oddly enough. Sam had never uttered the word “daddy,” and Dean couldn’t remember when he himself had stopped calling their father that. Possibly it had been the very night of the fire—he had not spoken much for some time afterwards. “Daddy” conjured up sweet tv-commercial images of a doting father. _No one’s like that in real life,_ Dean thought. _Look at you now, Cole, loving father and husband; I bet no one would believe you’d torture a guy just ’cause he’s the brother of the man you were out to get. How far did you go? Sam didn’t tell me, but I doubt it was pretty._

 _Well, I’d have done the same._ Dean didn’t suppress his small wry smirk. _Probably worse._

Cole lifted his head and caught the tail end of the smirk.

“So, Dean-o,” he said after a couple of slow blinks, “this is the hunter’s life. Waiting for evil to appear so you can squash it underfoot?”

“More or less.”

“Or shoot it in the head.”

Dean shifted and replied coolly, “If it has to be done.”

“Ah, the good ol’ passive voice. ‘If it has to be done.’ ” Cole was beginning to sound a little drunk. “ ‘Mistakes were made.’ ” He let out a little giggle, then closed his eyes again, rubbing his fingers against a new lesion forming on his right temple. Dean wanted to tell him to quit it, snap at him the way he would at Sam.

“What are you feeling now?” he asked abruptly instead. “Is it…moving, or what?”

“Just thirsty.” Cole sat up and scanned the room, and Dean tensed up automatically. “I was thinking—I was thinking I should write something.”

“What, your last will and testament?” Dean forced himself to joke. “Way too soon for that, dude.”

“For my son, you know?” Cole fidgeted a little, then seemed to come to a decision. “It’s stupid, but—every time I leave him, I think: what if it’s the last time he’ll see me?”

Dean winced. “It’s not stupid,” he murmured, his voice so low that he doubted Cole could hear him.

“And I don’t mean like, deployment, I mean just ordinary stuff like when I drop him off at school or whatever. What if I get hit by a car, or some blood vessel in my brain bursts?” Cole illustrated this last point with an explosive gesture of his fingers, then ran his hand over his head. Dean stared and began to form the words _You can’t live like that,_ but Cole went on.

“You wanna know the last thing my dad said to me? I was being totally obnoxious about some family thing, and he goes, ‘Dammit, Cole, can you stop thinking about yourself for just one second? Grandma wants to see you, so you’re going.’ Man, I was pissed, too.” He laughed ruefully, and Dean could hear the pain under the fondness.

The plastic of Dean’s water bottle crackled under his fingers. Cole, staring at it, appeared to lose his train of thought. Dean quickly drained the bottle and set it on the floor. As he straightened up, Cole spoke again.

“I could be a little shit sometimes, but mostly I was a good boy and he knew it,” he resumed. “Still.” He shrugged, sniffed, and looked into the fire.

Dean pursed his lips but made no reply. He couldn’t remember exactly what he had last said to Sam, nor what Sam had said to him. Something about hurrying, that was it. _Thanks a lot, Cole,_ he thought irritably. _Now on top of everything else I’ve gotta worry about my last fucking words._ He tried to figure out what phrases his brother had probably heard him say most frequently. “Shut up” was likely at the top of the list; he’d said it at least once a day for their entire childhood and well into adulthood, often appended with “or I’ll make you.”

Suddenly anxious, Dean took his phone out of his pocket and dialed Sam almost without thinking. He drew in a little breath of relief when he heard his brother’s voice saying his name, then immediately felt ridiculous. “How’s it going?” he asked gruffly. “You okay?”

“Yeah, it’s…quiet. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Just wanted to check on you.”

“Okay.” Sam sounded puzzled.

“Yeah.” Dean shot an embarrassed glance at Cole, but he was staring at some deer antlers on the opposite wall. “Be careful,” he added quickly and ended the call just as he heard his brother start to say “You too.”

“Big brothers,” Cole drawled as Dean put his phone away. Dean frowned at him, but Cole looked amused. “I got one too.”

*****

It was not the optimal outcome, and Dean was grateful that he hadn’t seen the Marine’s widow. Cole with his grim stoic face and Sam looking like a defeated dog were bad enough. _This sucks all ’round,_ Dean thought, _but it’s over now and all we can do is move on._ When Cole thanked him for “keeping me standing,” Dean felt like a fraud. _I was a half-second away from killing you. And I honestly thought you were toast after the electrocution thing didn’t work._

Then after Cole drove away, there was Sam with the whipped-hound expression that Dean could hardly bear to look at. _More cases like this,_ Dean worried, _and he’ll snap._

“I tried. I did; I tried,” Sam was saying now. “I just—I couldn’t save this one.”

 _Jesus, Sam, do you have to?_ Dean thought impatiently. _Right now? I’m so tired. We can’t save everybody, you know that. Someone’s time comes up, it’s over. Yeah, it’s crappy. It’s fucking crappy and I know you’re scared and so am I, little brother, so am I, but I don’t know what to say to you and that makes it a hundred times worse._

He said, “You know you can do everything right, and even still, sometimes the guy still dies.”

Dean’s birthday was coming up—soon he would be closer to forty than to thirty. Over the years he’d learned ever more sophisticated ways of saying “Shut up” to his brother, and even more effective ways of making him. Yet he felt no better about it now than when he was a kid, screaming at Sam in an attempt to get a moment’s peace.

Dean got into the Impala, but Sam remained standing behind it. He clenched his hands into tight fists, and Dean, watching him in the rear-view mirror, half-hoped that he would hit something and start a yelling match as he got in the car—Dean even prepared his first rebuttal: _“I was just trying to make you feel better!”_ —but this relief was denied him. Sam opened the door and slumped into the seat beside him without another word.

Dean drove until the sky began to lighten, then pulled into the parking lot of the first motel he saw. Sam glanced over at him. “I can drive,” he said testily.

Dean bit back his first response (“I _know!_ ”) and sighed, “Look, let’s just both get some sleep.”

Sam’s morose shrug said eloquently, “Whatever, since we both know you’ll just do what you want anyway,” but he voiced no further objection. Dean got out of the car, counted to ten, took a deep breath, and walked around to the passenger side.

“Hey,” he said, leaning into Sam’s open window. Sam looked up at him in surprise. “When we get home, we’ll start again, okay?”

“What?” Sam’s eyes were wide open and alert now.

“With the research. We’ll start again, from the top. Can’t hurt to turn the stones over one more time, huh, little brother?” Dean watched as a little spark appeared in those eyes and thought _Damn, is that all it takes?_ “Okay?” he repeated.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. A faint smile graced his lips, and he caught at Dean’s sleeve as Dean began to straighten up. “Thanks, Dean.”

His name, uttered by his brother. _You wanna know the last thing he said to me? My name, just my name. He was so relieved, like I was an oasis in the desert. “Dean’s here, and now everything will be all right.” And I knelt there absolutely useless while the life drained out of him, terrified and babbling like a fool._

Dean nodded and turned away, biting his lip. It was exhausting, but if he could fabricate optimism for Cole, then he could at least do the same for his brother. He would have to learn more ways to say “We’ll figure it out.” More ways to say “It’s gonna be okay.” More ways to say “I’m not gonna leave you.”

Even if he didn’t believe it.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I appreciate any feedback.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at: [amisplacedlonelyheartsad.tumblr.com](http://amisplacedlonelyheartsad.tumblr.com) or on LJ at: [misplaced_ad.livejournal.com](http://misplaced_ad.livejournal.com)


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